Emmy nominations stream in for Netflix

Last year, Netflix made history as its original series, “House of Cards,” scored top Emmy nominations — the first non-TV series to do so. This year, the drama is back for encore nominations, and it brought some of its Netflix friends along.

“Orange is the New Black,” the series set in a women’s prison, was nominated for best comedy series, as well as for writing and directing. Five of its actresses also got Emmy nods: Taylor Schilling, who plays the lead character Piper Chapman, for best actress in a comedy. Kate Mulgrew, who plays Red, for best supporting actress. In the guest actresses category: Natasha Lyonne as Nicky Nichols, Uzo Aduba as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren, and Laverne Cox as Sophia Burset. Netflix recently released the second season of the series.

Los Gatos-based Netflix, which has bet big (think billions of dollars) on producing its own original series, did a decent job against the cable network it has declared a competitor: HBO. The premium cable channel picked up a total of 99 nominations; Netflix scooped up 31. Netflix collected more nominations than either Fox or Comedy Central.

As we wrote last month, Netflix continues to work on bringing new series to its streaming subscribers, including a talk show starring Chelsea Handler, and a comedy starring big names such as Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Martin Sheen. It also produces several shows for kids.

Back to the Emmy nominations: “House of Cards” stars Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright were again nominated for best actor and actress, respectively, in a drama, and the show itself got a nod for writing, directing and best drama. Also scoring a nomination for lead actor in the Netflix comedy series “Derek” is Ricky Gervais. (“Derek” was previously on British TV.)

They have not spent billions on original content. They only have $7 billion in cost of revenue the past 3 years, a lot of that was DVD related and they said they would start spending 10% of their streaming budget on original content. I doubt they have even spent half a billion so far.

O.K.

In addition, I have not seen Orange (I heard its mainly for a female audience) but Derek was terrible and House of Cards has to be the most contrived, poorly written, boring piece of garbage I have ever seen.